Second Wind
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: After meeting the wormhole aliens for the first time, Ben Sisko is thankful his life is back on track.


I own nothing.

* * *

Second Wind.

From his office in OPS, Commander Benjamin Sisko was going over the latest reports gathered by the work crews as they went around to check just how much more damage the station had taken as a result of the Cardassian attack a few days ago. The newly named Deep Space Nine had been in a terrible mess already thanks to the withdrawal of the Cardassian Occupation forces, so the engineers already had their work cut out for them.

Sisko remembered how he had felt when he had gotten the orders to supervise the work in getting the Bajorans ready for entrance into the Federation, which would award them with incredible benefits that would go a long way to ensuring the Bajoran people moved past the hell the Cardassians had pushed them in for nearly a hundred years, with emphasis that he supervises the work on DS9.

Sisko had read between the lines. He was being sent to simply clean up the mess.

He had resented Starfleet for that, of course, but truthfully he had not cared.

He had planned to leave Starfleet anyway after spending time working in building orbital habitats and putting his sweat and blood into the Defiant project (he still _resented _Starfleet's inability to see that while the Borg threat had more or less died down despite the still horrendous damage caused when that Cube had invaded Federation space, that did not mean the Defiant should not still be refined into something different and better, and ready at a moment's notice), only to find his life empty without Jennifer in his life. Yes, he had Jake, but the pain of her loss had hurt him so much.

Sisko closed his eyes as he thought about his now-deceased wife, but while he still felt the pain that he doubted he would ever truly get rid of especially if he ever chose to marry again, it didn't hurt as he'd expected. He knew his son had come to view life in space as dangerous, and he had come to see that view as well. He had wanted to go back to the civilian sector.

Sisko placed the latest padd on the desk and stood up to stretch his legs and he walked over to the large oval-shaped viewing port and he looked out, just in time to witness as five Vulcan science vessels left the station and moved toward the point where…. a flash of light met them and the wormhole opened right in front of them, opening like a huge flower blooming in the morning sun, it just opened wider and wider and expanded.

The wormhole's event horizon glowed, like yellow smoke. Sisko knew from his own astrophysics lessons he'd learnt at the Academy, and what he'd picked up over the years since the event horizon was now visible.

Sisko watched as the Vulcan ships paused as if surprised by the appearance of the wormhole before they went through. Once they were through the wormhole snapped shut, as though it had never been there. Sisko knew from his and Dax's own experience of travelling through the wormhole that the conduit connecting this part of the Alpha Quadrant to the Gamma Quadrant, which at the current time was virtually impossible to reach with modern starships unless you wished to spend about 70 years crossing the distance, the Vulcans would be on the other side soon.

_A stable wormhole…._

It was still a surprise there was a wormhole which was stable, especially after the Barzan wormhole disaster, but it existed and it had changed Sisko's life; when he and Dax had learnt more about the Orbs, like the one with which he'd had a vision of his first meeting with Jennifer, Benjamin had felt a fire reignite his spirit, whereas before he had been merely content to just do his job.

But now the wormhole had changed his life.

Sisko remained standing by the window, looking out into space to where the wormhole was. He didn't know if anyone would ever truly understand the wormhole aliens who had made the wormhole their home after constructing it, but he knew they were important to the Bajoran religion. But they had helped him to get over Jennifer's death.

They had shown he had never truly left the death of his wife behind, it had reflected in his life ever since the Battle of Wolf 359. He had cared more for the pain he felt, and he hadn't cared about the career which he had worked so hard for. He had openly blamed Jean-Luc Picard for what had happened, even if Picard had been assimilated by the Borg, so the famous captain of the Enterprise had lost everything that had made the man who he was until he had become a cold, heartless monster.

Thanks to the aliens, Sisko had looked past his own pain and looked at Picard's own grief. He hadn't asked or wanted to be assimilated, and who knew how many demons the man had?

Thanks to the aliens who had helped him start the long process of moving on with his life, and for the first time in just a couple of years, Benjamin felt as though he were back on track with his life.

He came back to reality when the door chimed, and he turned around and saw Dax's distinctive form outside. "Come in," he called.

"Benjamin, we've just received word that two civilian starships would be coming in the next two days to begin studies into the wormhole," Jadzia reported as she stepped over the threshold into the office.

Sisko wasn't really surprised by the report. Starfleet had been studying wormholes for a long time, but they were usually so unstable and prone to collapse very quickly. Once it was known that on the doorstep of the Bajoran system there was a stable wormhole, one that not only possessed lifeforms within it on a different dimensional plane but had existed for 10,000 years, it was only a matter of time before a scientific unit was sent to properly study it.

"Alright," Sisko replied, already making plans. "Are they planning on staying?"

"I think it's likely," Dax answered. "They haven't clarified what their plans are, but keeping a group of scientists here to study the wormhole would make a lot of sense."

Sisko nodded. "Find a decent space they could make use of to make sure they don't get in the way of our own research but make sure they have access to our science labs just in case."

Dax was alright with that. "Right," she said, a smile cropping up on her face that made it light up beautifully. "I'm looking forward to what we'll learn about the wormhole, Benjamin. Yes, we might not learn all about it in our lifetimes, but it will go a long way to helping us understand more about wormholes in general. I wonder… do you think one day we might create wormholes, and then live in them like the aliens?"

Benjamin smiled as he chuckled, wondering if Jadzia was making a joke or thinking about the future. "Who knows?" he replied, remembering his own encounter with the aliens who lived outside of linear time and were able to take him back again and again to the moment of his wife's death. "But I am grateful towards the wormhole, and to the aliens inside it."

Jadzia's expression became confused. "Why?"

"When Jennifer…died," Sisko began quietly, inwardly thankful for Dax's quiet sympathy, knowing that the symbiont within her body had lost more people than he'd ever done, and so know more about moving on than he did, "I thought I would never get my life back on track. A part of me was okay with that, though I wondered if I would ever get my second wind."

"Now you have," Jadzia said quietly.


End file.
